Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY-EIGHT:
This is Part One of Five of Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan. Peter Bryan is regarded as one of Britain's most infamous serial-killers and cannibals with almost every article and documentary about him slavering over the grisly details of his murders, and especially his cannibalism. But how much of this story is the truth, an exaggeration or a lie? Who created these myths, why do we still believe them, and what evidence is there of cannibalism? Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
This series is primarily based off the Inquest papers into the care and treatment of Peter Bryan (September 2009).
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Summer, 2025. Through the triple thick glass of a barred window, 56 year old Peter savours the warm sun as it dapples across the nature reserve beyond. His wrinkly Caribbean skin is greyer like the stubble of his shaved head, and although he’s sporting in a grey tracksuit and white t-shirt, he can’t go jogging. Like clockwork, a nurse hands him his pill, an anti-psychotic; he smiles, swallows it, she notes it on her clipboard, and he thanks her with a cheeky grin and a slightly sarcastic “yummy, what’s for pudding?”. For 21 years, he’s been both a prisoner and a patient at Broadmoor, a high security psychiatric hospital in the remote wilds of Crowthorne in Berkshire; with high fences, electric gates, alarms and CCTV to protect the public, the staff and other patients from violent and potentially dangerous men like him. At his trial in 2005, four respected psychiatrists certified that Peter Bryan (a convicted serial-killer and cannibal) was “seriously mentally ill”, with one stating “he’s the most dangerous man I have ever met”, and found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, Judge Giles Forrester sentenced him to a whole-life order, meaning he will be incarcerated "for the rest of his natural life". It was said “it’s unlikely he will ever be released”, yet while under the care of doctors, psychiatrists and social workers – all experts held accountable by checks and balances to keep the public safe - he committed a suspected sexual assault, two of three brutal murders, and an act defined as ‘inhuman’. Separated from the world by walls, doors and guards, Peter smirks as he’s been in this situation before. But how was he released to kill? Was it a failure of the mental health system, a quirk of his sickness, or was he manipulating both so this brutal triple-murderer could escape the prison time he feared? Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan - Part 1. On the 4th of October 1969 at Newham General Hospital, East London, Peter Andrew Bryan was born. That year heralded a new era of technology, as 10 weeks prior, Apollo 11 had landed on the Moon, yet being surrounded by crumbling decay and squalor, Newham was the epitome of inner city poverty. In 1956, as part of the ‘Windrush generation’ of Commonwealth countries who came to Britain seeking ‘a better life’, Peter’s father travelled from the sun-kissed isle of Barbados to the rain-soaked gloom of England, followed a year later by his wife, having left behind their three boys and a girl with an aunt. As one of seven siblings with only three born in England - his brother Pelham in 1959, his sister Juliette in 1963, and himself six years later – it could be said that this fragmented family unsettled him, but as the youngest, not only was Peter his mummy’s favourite, but she spoiled him rotten, as blessed with a twinkle in his eyes and a cheeky smile, he knew how to manipulate her and get away with murder. As a boy, Peter was calm, polite and laid back, he was up for a laugh and had a sarcastic wit, but what his bubbly demeanour hid was the abuse they suffered. Peter was beaten but spared the full force of his father’s violence by his mother and older siblings who endured the worst, and although this crying child had his mother to soothe him, did those beatings imprint a desire to make others feel his fear? Sadly his mother wasn’t always there. Aged 4, his parents separated, his father moved in with another women, and although he returned, to support them, his mother went to work leaving Peter (he says) with a childminder but often alone for long periods as she flew to Barbados to see her other children. What he wanted was a family, what he found was the Boy’s Brigade, a Christian youth group which educated inner-city kids in sports, arts, music and community spirit, but the damage was already done. From 1974, he attended Shaftesbury Junior School in Forest Gate, East London. Said to be sometimes smart and kind, but prone to quick tempers, often the red mist would descend, but teachers dismissed this as a side effect of “having few friends, being unhappy… and a sense of shame and embarrassment at needing extra reading lessons”. He wouldn’t know this until he was in his 30s, but Peter was dyslexic. In his own words, he said “I was slow, unable to keep up”, but he wasn’t stupid, as his letters were neat with few mistakes, and doctors would say, he was “well-meaning and asked pertinent questions”. Aged 10, with only a minor developmental disorder, Peter was sent to a ‘special needs’ school, and feeling ostracised, he continued bullying the vulnerable, stating “I enjoyed having power over weaker children”, he pressured girls for sexual favours, manipulated the staff and pushed the boundaries. It began in his early years, but a running theme in the reports written about his life, states to get what he wanted “he conned and manipulated people, primarily by telling them what they wanted to hear”. Aged 11, Peter attended Trinity Secondary School in nearby Canning Town, a regular comprehensive which made no allowances for his dyslexia, so struggling; he got into fights, went shoplifting, groped girls for his sexual thrills, and having slapped a teacher, he was suspended from school for three days. Unsurprisingly, aged 15, with only a basic pass in woodwork, Peter dropped out of school. With nothing, not even hope, his new family had become a teen gang of misfits. Aged 12, maybe due to peer pressure, he was drinking, smoking cannabis and carrying a knife, being boys desperate to be seen as men in the 1980s when action movies glamorised violence. They stole, sold drugs and mugged the weak as “something to do… and it built a feeling of power and excitement within us”, but Peter wasn’t an angry young men who sought revenge because he felt the world hated him, he had plans. As a 5-foot 9-inch barrel-chested brute with dreadlocks and a gold tooth, he could look scary, but from age 14, Peter had a paper round, he taught cooking at his local soup kitchen, and in in 1983, he got a part-time job as a Sunday assistant at a clothes stall on Petticoat Lane Market, and at ‘Omcar’, the owner’s two clothes shops on Shaftesbury Avenue in the West End and the King’s Road in Chelsea. ‘Omcar’ was a small business ran by the Sheth family; with parents Mahindra & Rashmid (known as ‘Michael’ & ‘Rita’), and their two children ‘Bobby’ and Nisha. For a decade, Peter had remained a loyal trusted employee and a friend, who worked long hours – 7am to 10pm often seven days a week – and although his teenage years were difficult, as Jainists, they preached forgiveness and non-violence. Peter was disadvantaged, yet he had every chance of being a success… …but something bad had been brewing inside of him. In 1986, aged 17, when this young man needed a family more than most, as his dad had done with his older siblings, Peter was asked to leave home. Abandoned and broke, he got a council flat at The Flying Angel, a former Seaman’s mission at 287 Victoria Dock Road, Custom House in London’s Docklands; an industrial, crime-ridden sprawl, overlooking the construction site of the new London City Airport. It’s uncertain whether he was living there or squatting with two friends, but on an unspecified date, Police attended a report of an incident. The unnamed victim, a male in his late teens, said that he had been assaulted, a struggle had ensued, and Peter had tried to throw him from his sixth-floor window. With only Peter reported as being injured (suffering a ‘deep gash to the head’) and the victim unwilling to escalate it; no charges were brought, no police record exists, and Peter never discussed it. We don’t know if it was a drunken spat, drug related, a gang feud, an unprovoked attack, or if it even existed? Knowing Peter’s later crimes, several sources (perhaps incorrectly) list this as ‘an attempted murder’, but had it been successful, he could have been sentenced from 3 to 10 years for manslaughter, 3 years to life for attempted murder, or worse, as in 1988, the ‘whole life order’ was introduced in the UK for “the most heinous crimes with a sexual or sadistic factor”, which he’d be sentenced to 18 years later. This may have been a blemish on the unremarkable character of a teenage boy prone to outbursts of anger in an unrelentingly hard life, but no-one knew what made him tick or tipped him over the edge, so by 1988, aged 19, he attended West Ham College and passed his GCSE resits in English & Maths. News articles would later portray him as ‘bad from birth’, but he wasn’t, he was trying to do well. If he’d had a career to occupy his time, a hobby to busy his brain or was engaged in a loving relationship to swell his heart, he might have flourished as many of those diagnosed with his condition did… …but all he had was drugs, depression and a disintegrating family. In 1988, aged 19, Peter was back amidst the instability and violence of his family home, but that wasn’t what he said “broke him”. In the inquest files is listed an anonymous boy known only as P1. P1 was Peter’s friend, his closest friend and (some say) his only true friend. Whether through bullying, anxiety or drug-induced psychosis, P1 killed himself by hurling his body from the very top of a block of flats. It took P1 seconds to plunge to his death, yet this tragic incident shaped some of the darkest elements of Peter’s future and his personality, as after this, he said, his isolation and his sickness got worse. Unlike his body, Peter’s brain (like all of ours) wasn’t fully formed once he had finished puberty, as it was still developing up until the age of 26. Being malleable, as this was his first incidence of trauma, he didn’t know how to process intense emotions like anxiety, guilt and grief by himself, and becoming more withdrawn, he was at a much greater risk of developing PTSD and other mental health problems. Peter’s personality change could have been triggered by trauma … …but it could also have been caused by drugs. By 1989, aged 20, one year after P1’s suicide, Peter was spending £30 to £40-a-week on cannabis. But by 1992, aged 23, most of his money was spent on super-strength skunk weed which he smoked neat. His brain’s frontal cortex – which regulates his decision-making, emotions and impulses – should have steered him cautiously through his trauma, taking precautions and rewarding him justly, but with ‘skunk’ stimulating his more primal Amygdala, his logic too easily gave way to pleasure and anxiety. As with many drugs, like cocaine, LSD or amphetamines, long term use and abuse risked him suffering from a drug-induced psychosis. Skunk weed is a high-potency strain of cannabis which induces effects like relaxation, euphoria and altered senses, but can also result in a state of psychosis, which can lead to disorientation, confusion, paranoia and anxiety, especially in those susceptible to mental disorders. Peter’s personality change could have been triggered by trauma or drugs… …but it could also have been caused by schizophrenia. Schizophrenia has several symptoms; the sufferer’s perception of reality is distorted, their speech and thinking is confused, they experience hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that others don’t) and delusions (which aren’t based on reality), so they often can’t differentiate the real from the fake. Schizophrenia develops in the late teens when the brain is malleable. Its subtler symptoms (like mood swings, isolation and anxiety) are often mistaken as a ‘teenage phase’, its stronger symptoms mirror a drug-induced psychosis, and although it’s not hereditary, those with schizophrenia in the family have an increased risk of developing it. Peter had two older brothers, one was incarcerated at Dodd’s Prison in Barbados, one was held at Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, and they both struggled with psychosis. So, Peter’s personality change could have been triggered by trauma, drugs, or schizophrenia… …but before he was diagnosed, a good woman would be brutally murdered. The early signs of schizophrenia are subtle; irritability, bad posture and a lack of personal hygiene, but how could anyone differentiate that from a typical teenager? His confusion and anxiety was dismissed as a learning difficulty and drug use. He was unnecessarily rude, inappropriately sexual, he claimed he was being racially abused by everyone, and he’d become sensitive to bright lights and loud sounds. He was changing, but what teenager doesn’t? Schizophrenia is treatable and recovery is possible, but although early intervention is crucial, most schizophrenics aren’t diagnosed until their 20s or 30s. By the summer of 1992, when Britain roared to the cheers of the Queen’s Ruby Jubilee but was rocked by riots across the cities, 23-year-old Peter was in a depressive spiral. He was unkempt and erratic, not unlike most men with no money, career or girlfriend, who were stuck at home with his parents. That August, having returned from an unhappy family trip to his ‘roots’ in Barbados, he found his sister living in a bed-sit with her children having been assaulted by her partner, and witnessed one of his older brothers (a convicted rapist who – against doctor’s advice, at the family’s request - was granted ‘restricted leave’ as a patient from Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital), only to be convicted of ‘GBH with intent’ having set fire to their home on Derby Road and attacked his sleeping mother with a machete. Peter said, the whole incident left him feeling “very unstable”. And who wouldn’t? On top of that, he said his brother’s girlfriend was reading his diary, his neighbours were mocking him, his dole cheques went missing and someone had stolen the £500 he’d hidden under the floorboards. From September to November, his father stated he locked himself in his bedroom smoking ‘skunk’, and on the 28th of October 1992 at Snaresbrook Crown Court, he was convicted of the possession of a controlled drug, for which (as a first offence) he received a conditional discharge for one year. Had he been ‘born evil’ as many claim, he would have had more cautions and convictions, there would have been instances of arson, GBH, ABH and mutilation, maybe even rape, incest and paedophilia - all the hallmarks of a truly evil person? But there was none of that. His history mirrored that of a young man, lost and confused, who hadn’t been to a doctor and wasn’t known to mental health services. His world was dismantling before his very eyes… …but the one constant in his life was the Sheth family. Throughout, although ad-hoc, Peter had continued to work at ‘Omcar’, the clothing shop at 149 King’s Road in Cheslea, a small family business ran by the Sheth’s. In the ten years he had assisted them, he’d become more than an employee, he was like family, who they embraced as their own, welcomed into their shop and, on many occasions, had enjoyed meals with him in their home in the flat above. He was like a son to ‘Michael’ & ‘Rita’ and an older brother to 12 year old ‘Bobby’ & 21-year-old Nisha. They liked him, they trusted him, and through all his ups and downs, they had always supported him. They wouldn’t dream of abandoning him in his time of need, as what he needed was stability and love. From December 1992 until his first murder in March 1993, the family all noticed his changes. The boy with a cheeky smile and a twinkle in his eyes was gone, replaced by a surly, foul-smelling, mess with matted dreadlocks, sometimes a beard, who seemed lost, angry and distant, often in the same breath. When they spoke to him, it was like he was miles away, and when he did reply, it was like he was stuck on repeat. He rarely washed, his clothes were grubby and sometimes inside out, and yet, as moments of crisis arose within him, he smelled strongly of disinfectant, as if he was washing his face with bleach. The changes they witnessed were odd, yet many were also disturbing. In the months when Peter had locked himself in his bedroom, his father would say “I knocked, he came to the door holding a hammer”, what Peter called a ‘bolster’. Rita confirmed, “I saw him take one from our tool box in the basement, he brought it upstairs to the shop and left it near the doors at the back”. He did this several times and never said why, yet every time she returned it, he brought it back. He loved them like family, and they had never done anything to hurt or upset him, not once. By the start of March 1993, several items had gone missing including Rita’s jewellery box. Peter denied taking it, and when quizzed, he laughed at her, boasting “it’s easy to take money from Pakistanis as when you rob them, they don’t fight back”, as if he was threatening her that he would do it again. Rita was scared of him, and then one afternoon, he came into the shop saying “I feel like killing someone”. She told her husband, but nothing was done, as in his company, Peter was always a little angel. Days later, from out of nowhere, Peter took a belt from the display and started whipping Rita around her legs with the buckle. She began to dial the police, but he grabbed the phone, cut off the call and fled. Half an hour later, he came back and apologised. His words were heartfelt and his tears were honest. They knew he was troubled, and they wanted to help him, but on the 10th of March 1993, just one week before, having openly stolen a pair of boxer shorts, Nisha told her father, and Peter was sacked. Their ten years ended in an instant, they had given him every chance, but he was too difficult to handle when Michael wasn’t around, and with Rita not eating or sleeping, they did it gently. Peter bought her a jewellery box to say sorry, and when he left “he kept in touch and we were happy to hear from him”. But that evening, Peter came into the shop when Nisha was alone, grabbed her hard by wrist and said “your big mouth”. Rita said that after that “I was very careful not to leave Nisha in the shop, alone”. And then, it went quiet, Peter stopped coming in, and it was ‘peaceful’ without him around. It was all a series of very unremarkable events which led up to this serial killer and cannibal’s first brutal murder. But nothing in this story is what it seems… …or what many have claimed, including Peter himself. Thursday 18th of March 1993 was an ordinary day, being cold and blustery. At 5pm, Peter popped on a brown leather jacket, blue jeans, trainers and a dark baseball cap, and left his parent’s two-storey terraced house on Derby Road. He had slept in till mid-afternoon, and although he hadn’t changed his clothes or bathed in days, his face was red, his skin was sore, and he had a strange smell of bleach. At Forest Gate station, he caught the 5:10pm train to Stratford, the Central Line tube to Mile End as he mingled with the rush-hour commuters, and hoped off at South Kensington, it took roughly 1 hour and 20 minutes, give or take the usual delays, with the Sheth’s shop barely a 15 minute walk away. Inside his jacket he had stashed a foot-long, half-kilo, claw-hammer made of steel, which he claimed he carried “as I didn’t want it lying about the house”, yet, later interviewed, he stated “I needed more time to decide what to do and thought the walk might stop me from attacking Michael Sheth”, as in some later recollections, Peter said that Michael owed him £500, £600 and in one retelling £1600. Later, he’d claim “I went to a mate’s house, smoked some dope and drank wine, as I was feeling tense, I still ‘buzzed’ when I arrived”, only test results told a different story. He later claimed, “a gang nicked my cap, so I smashed up one of their cars with my bolster”, only no cars were reported as attacked with a hammer that day. And as he walked to the King’s Road, he claimed “I saw lots of rocks… and broke six windows, hoping the police would arrest me” and stop him before he killed, only on his route from South Kensington tube passed Onslow Square and Sydney Street, every window remained intact. In fact, if he had set off at 5pm, and arrived at the shop at 6:30pm, as he stated, there was no time for any ‘skunk’ to be smoked, caps nicked and windows or cars to be smashed - his timings don’t stack up. At a little after 6:30pm, Peter stood on a side street – pacing and mumbling - as at 7pm, like clockwork, the Sheth’s clothing shop at 149 King’s Road would be shutting up. The street was bustling with traffic, the pavements were busy and the stop was packed with passengers awaiting the 11, 22 & 394 buses. Across from ‘Omcar’, a queue was forming at the Chelsea Curzon, as ‘Crush’, new movie starring Alicia Silverstone and Kevin Dillon was showing, and next door, the Trafalgar pub was bustling with boozers. No sane person would willingly commit a murder at this time, in this place, but this was his ‘plan’. At 6:55pm, shifting nervously and sweating profusely, Peter watched as Rita left the shop and entered the black door to the flat above, only she wasn’t his intended victim. Michael didn’t owe him a penny, and although he would state otherwise, he wasn’t Peter’s target. At two minutes to, ‘Bobby’ removed the pavement sign from outside, but being just a kid, he meant nothing to this man who’d describe himself as “a psychopath in the making”. As with his claw hammer gripped tight in his hand and his right ankle said to be tingling, serial-killer and cannibal Peter Bryan saw the girl he was here to kill… …their daughter, Nisha. Summer, 2025, Broadmoor. An older, greyer Peter stares out of the window of the psychiatric hospital he was told he will remain in "for the rest of his natural life". 32 years after Nisha’s brutal murder, which shocked a community, devastated a family and traumatised her brother who miraculously survived, you may expect that he would serve his sentence for that murder and attempted murder? And he did. He was arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned. Justice had been done. He was safely behind bars - under the care of doctors, psychiatrists and social-workers; all experts in their field, held accountable by checks and balances to keep the public safe - where he could never hurt anyone else, ever again. At least, he should have been. Yet he would go onto commit a suspected sex crime, two more murders and an act defined as ‘inhuman’. But was it a failure of the mental health system, a quirk of his sickness, or was he manipulating both so this brutal triple-murderer could escape the prison time he feared? Part two of Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan continues next week. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. 
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